Word: fahrenheit
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...Governor George W. Bush, who told the muckraker: ?Behave yourself, will ya? Go find real work.? Moore has made trouble for so many powerful people he has become a media power of his own. He can even make celebrities of mere movie reviewers: When his latest cinematic incendiary device, ?Fahrenheit 9/11,? had its first press screening Monday morning, American critics emerging from the theater were besieged by a convoy of TV and radio crews from networks around the world who wanted to know what they thought of Moore?s blast at the Bush Administration...
...much for the controversy. How is it as a movie? ?Fahrenheit 9/11? - the title is a play on the Ray Bradbury novel (and Francois Truffaut film) ?Fahrenheit 451,? about a future totalitarian state where reading, and thus independent thinking, has been outlawed - has news value beyond its financing and distribution tangles. The movie, a brisk and entertaining indictment of the Bush Administration?s middle East policies before and after September 11, 2001, features new footage of abuse by U.S. soldiers: a Christmas Eve 2003 sortie in which Iraqi captives are publicly humiliated...
...means. But, Moore argues, bad for Americans as well. As he sees it, 9/11 was a tragedy for America, a career move for Bush. The attacks allowed the President to push through Congress restrictive laws that would have been defeated in any climate but the ?war on terror? chill. ?Fahrenheit 9/11? shows some tragicomic effects of the Patriot Act: a man quizzed by the FBI for casually mentioning at his health club that he thought Bush was an ?asshole?; a benign peace group in Fresno, Cal., infiltrated by an undercover police agent...
...film has its longueurs. The interviews with young blacks and a grieving mother in Moore?s home town of Flint, Michigan, are relevant and poignant, but they lack the propulsive force and homespun indignance of the rest of the film. ?Fahrenheit 9/11? is at its best when it provides talking points for the emerging majority of those opposed to the Iraq incursion. In sum, it?s an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administration?s crimes and misdemeanors...
Together, the Nightline, Stern and Fahrenheit 911 episdes form a worrisome pattern of corporate hindrance of political discourse—or in Nightline’s case, simply a refusal to acknowledge the sacrifice of American soldiers. The conglomerates act lawfully. But regardless, by refusing to disseminate programs and publications because of their political content, firms like Sinclair, Clear Channel and Disney perfidiously shape debate to suit their preferences—a complacent public interested in consuming products instead of politics...